Michael Fassbender as Epps and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave.

I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation—only
so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person. My object is, to
give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life,
without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the
pages of present a picture of more cruel wrong or a severer bondage.

-Solomon Northup, Twelve
Years a Slave

Films just don’t get much better than 12 Years a Slave.Slave,
the well-deserved recipient of the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto
International Film Festival, uses the visual power of cinema for exactly the
reason that the medium was invented: to entertain, but also to enlighten. Steve
McQueen visual audacity makes 12 Years a
Slave hit audiences with a force they’ve rarely felt at the movies. This
adaptation of the true story of Solomon Northup—an African American who was
born as a free man, but was abducted and sold into slavery only to be rescued
after a dozen years of labour on the plantations—is a bold, brutal, and
ultimately transformative film experience. 12
Years a Slave feels like a cinematic landmark.

If Northup’s 1853 book remains one of the most compelling
and dramatic insights into the “peculiar institution” of slavery, then Steve
McQueen’s film is a worthy adaptation. The screenplay by John Ridley (Undercover Brother) is mostly faithful
to its canonical source, but 12 Years a
Slave finds a visceral cinematic freedom in its depiction of the conditions
Northup describes from his experience. 12
Years a Slave does for the American history what Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List does for
representations of the Holocaust. This film will shake you.

12 Years a Slave
is anchored by a phenomenal performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor (Children of Men) as Northup. Ejiofor
plays Northup as a man of unwavering dignity and humility, as he is thrown into
the hot hellfire below the Mason-Dixon Line. Northup is free and making a
comfortable living in New York when the film begins. He provides for his wife,
Anne, and his two children (one of which is played by Beasts of the Southern Wild’s little hurricane Quvenzhané Wallis),
and his skills on the violin receive an offer from two men who promise money
and an extended circus tour.

Solomon is duped by the men and then sold into slavery. He
awakens in shackles, protesting his freedom to deaf ears, before a ride on a
treacherous slave ship brings him to Louisiana. Solomon, renamed Platt upon
arriving in Louisiana, is first sold to a slave driver named Ford (played by
Benedict Cumberbatch from The Fifth Estate and August: Osage County).
Also among Ford’s purchase is Eliza, played by Adepero Oduye, whose strong
screen presence more than adequately compensates for the extent to which
Eliza’s role is reduced in the adaptation. Eliza, separated from her children
during the transaction by a cruel slave trader (Paul Giamatti), remains on the
plantation like a figure of the walking dead. Eliza knows no happiness during
her lifetime; only sadness, heartache, and misery, which Solomon sees are all
too prevalent on the plantations when he is sold again and meets Patsey (Lupita
Nyong’o) on the plantation of Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).

Northup remains on the Epps plantation for his final decade
of bondage. Epps is a self-proclaimed “nigger breaker”. He is the epitome of
cruelty and meanness. Fassbender commands the screen as Epps, playing the slave
driver as a spine-chilling man of evil. Fassbender captures the inhumanity of
slavery with Epps’s self-serving sliminess that makes one’s skin crawl.
Mistress Epps, played by a scene-stealing Sarah Paulson, is equally disquieting
in her cold, nonchalant abuse of Patsey. Patsey, Epps’ favourite both her for
nimble fingers on the cotton field—she can pick 500 hundred pounds daily
compared to the average slave’s haul of 200—and for her beauty. Patsey’s
suffering is compounded, for she is a pawn between the two cruel, soulless
slave drivers.

The hardship of life on the Epps plantation hits its peak in
a near heart-stopping moment in which Epps gives Patsey a brutal whipping.
Patsey’s crime is an innocent one: on the Sabbath, she visits a neighbouring
plantation to receive a bar of soap because Mistress Epps refuses to give her
one as punishment for her husband’s affection. The wrathful Eppses strip
Patsey, tie her to a pole, and give her an almighty flogging. The punishment is
doubly cruel, for Epps cannot bring himself to flay the slave he adores. Under
the gaze of Mistress Epps, the whip is passed to Solomon.

Inhumanity has never seen such a bold composition as that in
which Patsey’s face assumes the foreground and Solomon’s occupies the
background. As slave brutalizes slave, McQueen dramatizes a horrific business
that makes victims of all who are in it. The stark violence and callousness of
the scene then doubles when Solomon cannot bear the pain he inflicts on Patsey anymore
and Epps takes control of the whip with greater force. It’s then that 12 Years a Slave offers its frankest
blow for the legacy of slavery in America. Lash upon lash strips Patsey’s ebony
flesh to the bone. Nyong’o’s revelatory emotional force in this scene—and
especially in the pleading that precedes the whipping—is an incredibly
affecting and troubling feat. As 12 Years
a Slave returns to Patsey’s wounded face once Epps relinquishes his fury
and Patsey crumbles, letting the small ivory coloured bar of soap fall to the
ground after remaining in her clutches throughout the ordeal, the film offers a
ferociously visceral realization of the horrors of plantation life described by
Northup (albeit less graphically) in his book.

McQueen’s no-holds-barred direction of 12 Years a Slave is necessarily bold and brutal. The provocative,
elongated acts of violence of the film unfold with horrific power. The
experience of 12 Years a Slave is probably
much like what Alex felt while being strapped to a chair in A Clockwork Orange and having his eyelids
propped open while images of violence flashed before him. 12 Years a Slave holds where most films would cut away. McQueen
wants the audience to take note at the horror of what they see: this story is a
truth of American history. The legacy of American capitalism was built on the
flayed backs of victims like Patsey. It’s sickening, and doubly so for the fact
that it took so long for such a frank depiction of this side of American
history to grace the screen.

While the assault on Patsey is sure to remain one of the
most debated scenes of the year, there is another moment in 12 Years a Slave in which McQueen’s
subtle eye for the visual power of cinema furthers Northup’s narrative to a
remarkable degree. Around the midpoint of the film, our hero is strung up on a
noose and ready to meet his death. The penalty comes when Solomon retaliates
against Tibeats (Paul Dano), a vindictive acquaintance of Master Ford, and
gains control of the whip and beats the white boy. In turn, Tibeats’s friends
string Solomon to a tree. It’s only when one of Ford’s workers notes that Ford
will suffer severe financial duress that Tibeats stops raising Solomon up the
tree. The men leave Solomon hanging as they await Ford’s return. McQueen and
cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (who also shot McQueen’s previous films Hunger and Shame) capture the rest of Solomon’s day in one haunting long take.

As Solomon dangles inches from his death, he shuffles his
feet along the muddy ground to find a steady footing that will keep him alive
until his master returns. His fellow slaves come out of hiding once Tibeats et
al flee the scene. The deep focus of the shot shows the slaves putter about the
plantation, resuming their duties as if one of their own was not on the cusp of
death. The slaves pay Solomon no heed as they move around the space of the
plantation and Solomon remains in the centre of the scene. The shot, one of the
most powerful image of the year, suggests how deeply internalized is the
ideology with which the film engages. The slaves on the plantation are so
brutalized into docility they cannot save the life of one of their own.

12 Years a Slave
acknowledges the frozen passivity of the slaves in one unusual moment in which
the film breaks the fourth wall between the characters and the audience. A
singular close-up on Ejiofor sees Solomon stare directly into the camera. The
film returns the gaze to the viewer, acknowledging one’s ability to do nothing
but watch in dismay. There might be many a moment in 12 Years a Slave when a viewer might wonder why Solomon and company
fail to react. It’s akin to the musing proffered by Calvin Candie (Leonardo
DiCaprio) in Django Unchained,
Quentin Tarantino’s Blaxploitation spin on slavery, which ponders why the
slaves don’t rise up and annihilate the white man. Better yet, Solomon’s unnerving
stare is the visual equivalent of the question that Hanna Schmitz (Kate
Winslet) asks directly in The Reader:
“What would you have done?”

This visual astuteness that makes 12 Years a Slave such a cutting experience on both an emotional and
an intellectual level. The adaptation might have easily honoured its hero by
offering his own words in voiceover, allowing Solomon to narrate his exploits
on the road to freedom; however, the film finds a voice of its own and it’s an
authentically bold one at that. Perhaps it’s fitting that the film eschews the words
of the book. Twelve Years a Slave, as
told by Northup to editor David Wilson, speaks with surprising favour of some
of the cruel owners Solomon encounters on his way. Even Mistress Epps is said
to shed a tear upon Solomon’s departure.

The book, for all its critical framing of Northup’s
experience, says that there are nevertheless some pretty good slave drivers one
might happen to fall upon. The film, however, shows that no matter how
respectable an individual might be, he or she is still an agent in a profoundly
dirty business. The matter arises once during a debate between Solomon and
Eliza that touches the pits of both their despair: Solomon tries to find the
bright side in his servitude, saying that Master Ford is a decent man. Eliza
simply replies that he’s still a slave driver. No shred of goodness can
compensate for the reality the film shows.

Equally powerful is one lengthy portrait that McQueen and
Bobbitt frame on the face of a fellow slave as the workers on the plantation
bury one of the workers who died on the field. The woman leads the funeral
procession in a soulful hymn, which is featured in the film’s trailer. Ejiofor
mumbles the words before breaking in to a full bravado, marking the moment that
Solomon acknowledges a kinship he feels with his fellow slaves on the
plantation. It’s a rare moment of release in the emotional journey of 12 Years a Slave. The ultimate catharsis
comes at the end, however, when Solomon is finally reunited with his family and
Ejiofor unloads the burden that Solomon’s been carrying throughout his ordeal.

12 Years a Slave
is an achievement in every sense. From Ejiofor’s poignant and commanding lead
to the excellent ensemble cast, which also includes memorable appearances by
Brad Pitt and Alfre Woodard, to McQueen’s refreshing direction, 12 Years a Slave is a fully realized
endeavour. It’s one for the history books.